|
Czech author Kundera accused of informing on spy
2008-10-13
A document written by the Czech Communist police claims that author Milan Kundera informed on a purported Western spy in the 1950s, a state-sponsored institute said Monday. The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes said a team of historians and researchers found a document written by the SNB, or Czech Communist police, that identified Kundera as the person who informed on a man who was later imprisoned for 14 years. The reclusive Kundera, the author of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," lives in Paris. Phone calls to his publisher seeking comment were not immediately returned. According to the file, published on the institute's Web site, Kundera in 1950 informed on Miroslav Dvoracek, who had been recruited in Germany by the Czech emigre intelligence network to work as a spy against the Communist regime. Dvoracek visited a woman in Prague and left a suitcase in her apartment. She told her boyfriend, who later told Kundera, and Kundera went to the police. Dvoracek was arrested when he came to collect the suitcase. He was later sentenced to 22 years in prison and eventually served 14, working in uranium mines. Collaboration with the Communist Party was widespread in Czechoslovakia. The country was one of the first to publish the names of alleged collaborators, as part of the so-called "screening process" in 1991. The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes has been assigned by the Czech government to collect and publish Communist-era files. It is widely viewed as credible. Kundera joined the Communist Party as a student, but was expelled after criticizing its totalitarian nature. After the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia crushed the liberal reforms of Alexander Dubcek, he left the country. The books Kundera wrote after his departure were banned from publication in his homeland until the Communist collapse in 1989, but his work was respected among dissidents. Kundera, 79, has lived in France since 1975 and it is there that he published his most famous books, including "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting," "The Art of the Novel" and "Immortality." He was granted French citizenship in 1981. The author lives in virtual seclusion, only travels to his former homeland incognito and never speaks to the media.
Czech author Kundera accused of informing on spy (2008-10-13)Writers put '68 under the spotlight at Prague festival (2008-06-01)Kundera masterpiece becomes Czech bestseller after 20 year wait (2006-11-10)
| 
